Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Pawn Shop Crawling

AI am always enamored of a good pawn shop.  Regular readers know this; many of the things I look for, I start my search in a pawn shop.

I've been looking for a little, portable PA system.  Something that runs on both battery and AC power.  In Cowboy Fast Draw, we can run our ranges on 12 volt power or AC, and that's a plus.  A fully charged marine battery can run our range electronics for a weekend.  A little PA system is useful for safety briefings and shooters meetings, and while AC power is normally available, having a battery otion is nice too.

We can buy these things on Amazon, or at Sam's club in the $100-150 range, but I thought that I'd start my search at my favorite pawn shop, to see what Johnny had available.

I got Johnny out from behind his desk and told him what I was looking for.  Compact, lightweight, on wheels, with a collapsible handle.

"I may have just what you're looking for," says he, as we head toward the pawn counter.

Sure enough, he pulls out something that looks like this.

Mine is marked POLAROID, but I'm sure that it's made by the same Chinese outfit that makes lots of consumer electronics.  We tested it,  It has a USB port, Bluetooth, and a host of features that I'll probably never use, but it does have a standard microphone jack and while it doesn't have an internal battery, it does have jacks for 12v power.  It should suit my needs perfectly, and it cost considerably less than a brand-new comparable units from the local big box store.

A couple of banana plugs and alligator clips and I'll be able to hook it to a battery.  It should serve our needs just fine.

1 comment:

John in Philly said...

Spend a little time and money and make the polarity hookup of the battery as fool resistant as possible.

I bought a new battery booster/starter recently and the alligator clamps have some electronics in the cable that prevents current from flowing if one hooks up the polarity the wrong way.

I learned this one the hard way. Luckily the non repairable inverter that released the magic smoke had standard automotive fuses inside, and once again the kit of bits designed to remove tamper resistant fasteners came in handy.